Humans frequently make use of their environment when acquiring and processing information. For example, humans retrieve factual knowledge not only from their own organic memory but also from their handwritten notes, sometimes from their colleagues, from the books they studied the facts with in the first place, from search engines, and so on. Clearly, it is a challenge to proficiently navigate the plethora of cognitive strategies available in today’s technologized world. Here, we took a look at a mechanism that contributes to such proficiency: performance monitoring. Specifically, we took a look at the time course of speed monitoring. Is speed monitored consistently across all encounters with a cognitive strategy? To answer this question, we subtly manipulated the time it took two algorithms to find the solution to Trivia questions in a forced-choice observation block and subsequently asked participants to use the algorithm they prefer in a free-choice block. Crucially, some algorithms performed faster at the beginning and some at the end of the forced-choice observation block. Across a series of experiments, our results clearly show a preference for algorithms that performed fast in the beginning of the observation block. Results showed no preference for algorithms that performed fast at the end of the observation block. Thus, we found evidence for a primacy but no evidence for a recency effect. In other words, performance monitoring might be focused on initial encounters of novel cognitive strategies and be less pronounced thereafter.